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The thing about Hawaii is that before you go, all anybody will say to you is, it's paradise. This is literally the word that people use. You know, you tell a friend, I'm going to Hawaii, and then it's like you watch the word enter their brain and the sensate thinking part of them goes away and their eyes start to glaze. And then, as if in a dream, like a scene from the manchurian candidate, they say the word, it's paradise. Welcome. WBZ Chicago. It's this american life. I'm Irma Glass. Each week, of course, we choose a theme and invite a variety of writers and performers to tackle that theme. Today's program, nightmare vacations stories by Sandra Singh Low and David Sederes. And this if an american family can't get along in paradise, what hope is there? I want to go back to the cool boy. I want to see all the counties and waheedies that I used to know so long ago. I can hear the old guitars playing on the beach at home. No, no, no. I can hear the old Hawaiian singing back to corner. It's a grand old place. It's all just fantasy. You're telling I'm just a little wine out of. I want to go back to my fishing point. I want to go back to my little machine. So my sisters and nephews fly in from California. My parents fly in from the east coast. I take an early morning plane from O'Hare. I went mainly because I wanted to spend some time with my parents. My dad was just out of the hospital. He'd had a emergency surgery, nearly died, and I wanted to hang out with them. You know, try to get along better, feel closer, which in my family, as in many, is not so easy. I brought the pictures of my trip to show you this one. This is the condo we stayed in. You can see palm trees through the windows. That's my sister Karen on the couch with the diethyde coke. Good morning America, which I view as the clattering, vapid noise of satan, is on the television. But that's what my parents like, and I wanted to do what they wanted to do. My parents. Hawaii was not a romantic place of ramshackle bungalows and beaches lit by torchlight. In fact, it was a suburban looking condo with overstuffed pastel furniture and I pastel hotel art prints framed on the wall in a timeshare community with tennis courts and easy parking and a mall and a grocery store. In short, this was the least exotic possible setting. But when we arrived, my mom got out of the car looked around the parking lot at the neatly trimmed lawns, and she said the word paradise. This picture, this is my dad making cereal in the condo. My parents brought their favorite breakfast cereals with them 10,000 miles to Hawaii. They like the familiar comforts of home, like many people do, in fact, in all sorts of stressful situations. I realized on this trip, I hadn't actually quite put this together. I realized on this trip that in all sorts of stressful situations, what my parents do is that they make themselves comfortable by focusing on creating a comfortable personal space. When my sisters and I moved away to college, my parents comforted themselves by building a new house. When my mom got breast cancer five years ago, they decided to start a major rehab on the house and in Hawaii, with the stress of having to deal with the children and the grandchildren, they spent a lot of time obsessing on the condo and what they saw as its many shortcomings. The sliding glass doors weren't the heavy, nice kind, my mom thought. The bathrooms, tiles, and floors didn't have the quality that my mother would prefer. And rather than spend more time with her family, which was, you know, the point of the whole vacation, she would vanish for hours at a time. She would vanish, like, the whole afternoon and be like, mom, you know, where she'd be, and she would have been out, you know, checking out other condos and hotel accommodations, comparing. This is me snorkeling. At one point, I talked everybody into renting snorkeling equipment. And we all went on, you know, to one of these coves where they say, it's really nice, snorkeling. And when we got there, I could not get anybody to come in the water with me. It turned out that none of the things that you would expect, that people would actually want to do in Hawaii were things that. That my parents especially were willing to do. You know, they don't snorkel or swim. They don't like the ocean or the sun. They won't go to look at volcanoes. They don't want to see hula dancers. They don't want to drink, you know, fruity tropical drinks with umbrellas in them. My sisters and I, we couldn't even talk them into staying up late and playing cards with us, you know, and it just. It begs the question, the central problem, the problem of the family vacation, what can people do that will make them feel closer? You know? The activities offered by Hawaii seem so puny in comparison to the mountain that the average family presents. About 20 minutes after this picture was taken, I got out of the water and we all kind of went our separate ways for the day. My mom went off to look at condos again and I, you know, I just did not want to go look at condos. Me, I did not believe that finding a place with heavier sliding glass doors and nicer tiles in the bathroom was going to bring us any closer as a family. But it's not like I had any better ideas about how to get. Cause Cs Lewis once wrote, and I don't know if this is original to him, but anyway, it's in one of his books, that there's no such thing as a heaven or hell. He says what happens after you die is that you simply continue to be the person who you are but for eternity. So you become more and more like yourself forever. And for some people that's heaven, and for others it's hell. I bring this up because I think paradise shares this quality with the afterlife. For some people, a vacation in paradise is paradise, but for others of us, it's much more difficult. It's very nice to go traveling to Paris, London and Rome. It's oh so nice to go traveling but it's so much nicer yes, it's so much nicer to come home it's very nice to just wander the camel route to Iraq it's oh so nice to just wander but it's so much nicer yes, it's oh so nice to wander back the mamzells and fraulein and the senoritas are sweet but they can't compete cause they just don't have what the models have on Madison eye it's very nice to be footloose with just a toothbrush and comb it's oh so nice to be footloose but your heart starts singing when your home would winging cross the phone and you know your faith act two. My mother was an optimist. No, I mean really an optimist. This was a woman who, in 1969, planned a family summer vacation to Ethiopia. Sandra Tsing ho is a writer, performer and composer. She's a columnist for Buzz magazine in Los Angeles. This story is from her one woman show, Aliens in America, which is largely about her mother and her father. In all fairness, Ethiopia was not her first choice. Given her druthers, she would have hopped on a luxury ocean liner to Hawaii while young men in tight pants served her peach schnapps on a silver tray. Peach schnapps. It is a most elegant drink, she used to tell us girls. My mother stood 511 a fast talking german, brunette, given to wearing bright red lipstick, big amber beads, polka dot dresses. My sister Caitlin and I thought she was the most elegant person we'd ever seen. Of course, we were ages nine and six. Peach schnapps. We used to drink it all the time in Danzig before the war, when your mother and tanta tail used to waltz to Strauss's blue Danube. Thank you very much. It's a glittering ballroom in support, built right over the sea. Mid Rosengardinen. And of course, you know your mother's dance card was far from empty in those days. There was Hans Heinrich, Karl Ost, Dieter Fischerkucher. My mother was a nonstop talker. She would not stop talking. That's why she was so sure her Hawaii pitch would work. Palm trees, pineapples. Bali hai, bali hai, bali hai, bali hai. But my father never took to the idea of spending money for the sole purpose of fun. Vacations, birthdays, swimming lessons, Christmas. These were concepts that didn't really work for him. It is not that I do not like to spend money, he'd say. Oh no, spend, spend, spend. That is all I do. It is just that I do not like to throw it away on nothing. Hawaii, of course, was nothing. A horror of sunny beaches, fruity drinks, laughing, happy people. Why would we want to go there? Where is the educational value? My father, by contrast, was fascinated with Uruguay. Why, he had a friend there we could stay with for free. But it was more than that. The people of Uruguay are very, very sensible and hardworking. The agrarian farm workers face a fascinating challenge with the combines and the technological hurdles that they blah blah, blah, blah blah. You might wonder how such opposite people as my parents got together in the first place. I blame it on Buick. When my mother first saw my father in the mid fifties, he was sitting behind the wheel of a shiny new 56 Buick. I guess a man looks better than he ought in a buick, especially when it's surrounded by southern California in the fifties. A palm fringed swimming pool dotted utopia, lit by a sun so bright you actually start to hallucinate. You believe you are in fact quite similar to a person after all. One, both of you are new immigrants, recently escaped from bad circumstances in your home countries. My father was orphaned by age twelve in Shanghai, lived in poverty. My mother went through World War two, ran from soldiers, heard bombs drop around her. Of course, my mother hated stories of such grim, zolaesque realism. Her favorite after dinner stories were either goofy or schmaltzy, ending hopefully with a glass of peach schnapps and a sing along of some kind. When american friends at dinner parties asked her about hardship in Dantzig, World War Two, the polish occupation, she'd cut them off at the pass. But enough of me. We are all of us travelers, nicht wah, foreign people in a foreign land. And we all of us, miss hello, let us sing little vice. You look happy to see me. Similarity number two between my parents, nothing. Except, I guess, that both had come to America, a place where miserable yesterdays could be traded in for joyous visions of tomorrow. And why not? It was the sixties, a great time for America. Jackie O was in the wine house. Apollo rockets were in the sky. The future was made flesh at eye popping world's fairs featuring whizzing monorails. Above, below, pavilions of happy dancing third world people joining hands and singing it's a small world after all. It's a small world after all so what if my parents had nothing in common? Never mind. My mother would make this work. In 1969, after many disagreements, she had learned to be crafty. She dropped the idea of Hawaii or Florida or disneyland. All she was suggesting was a four day trip to Malawa, pearl of the Red Sea, which lay in a little known, remote part of Ethiopia. It was the last adventure my parents would ever agree on. Ethiopia. My father, of course, had been immediately interested. And why not? Ethiopia was notoriously backward, wretched, poor. At that time, too, they were recovering from some sort of bloody civil war, leaving its countryside bleak, its peoples desperate. No one in the world would want to go on vacation in Ethiopia, which my father saw could be turned to our advantage. After all, my father asked, if no one else is going, think how far the american dollar will go. He thinks a vacation should cost one american dollar. Caitlin and I pled with my mom. He's cheap and mean. We were onto him even then. He just doesn't want us to have any fun. Please, mom, we don't want to go to Ethiopia. Ethiopia? She asked. Where is that? Oh, you mean Ethiopia? She sang it as though it were a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, like Oklahoma. Ethiopia? You mean home of the fabulous little town of Malawa, pearl of the Red Sea, with its beautiful beaches and luxurious resort hotel with its glittering ballroom built right over the sea, just like in suppert. Really? We ask, Natuleich. It's all right here in Mein Kleinebuch. Your father does not know it yet. He'll probably be quite angry. But once we get there, we will run away from your father and swim on the beach. Swim on the beach was the kind of word my mother would use to describe anything that was too wonderful to be possible and therefore would never come to pass. Swim on the beach with the pearl of the Red Sea. Who knew air Ethiopia was not a good airline? A plunging four hour ride on a shuddering gray plain brought us to a town with the suspiciously gay name of Lullibella. La li Bella. My mother exclaimed in mock dismay as its airport, a manurefield, rose up to meet us. The Hotel Lolibella seemed made entirely of peat, and peat, which had taken its kicks and beatings from the desert wind for a long time. Thick woven carpets with ominous symbols hung everywhere, exuding a faint hay smell. Caitlin and I were given sour glasses of lemonade to drink as we perched on the family suit cases, watching scrawny sheep graze outside a big picture window. All at once the sheep screamed and scattered. A man in a galabea was running after them with an axe. I turned from this weird spectacle to contemplate yet another. There stood my mother with four german tourists, large and blond and gleaming in their sweat streaked khaki, expensive cameras and voluptuous leather travel bags draped around them like fresh kill. Apparently there was no place in Africa so miserable some german tourist did not want to see it. Aber wisint aller deutschen. My mother cried out, raising her hands imploringly. A beat, and then all five adults fell into a group hug. There was laughter, sighing a rapid german exchange. Von Dantzic was the startled query, emphatic, nodding. Achja. Achja. So they all originally hailed from my mother's hometown. Photos were coming out of purses and bags now, chocolates, maps of where they had gone, of where they were going. And now here is where the Malawa pearl of the Red Sea magic really clicked in. By incredible coincidence, Ilse, Franz Josef, and the fat couple were headed, too, to Malawa pearl of the Red Sea. It would be a party. Maybe Caitlin and I would even get to swim on the beach. With a wave of my mothers hand, the whole group sat down to a surprisingly festive ethiopian dinner of bread and peas and potatoes and, of course, fresh mutton that Katelyn and I had watched nibble its last blades of grass just hours earlier. The adult buzz was growing to a roar. Hoo hoo hoo hoo. There was much slapping of thighs and lifting of glasses. Even my father was having fun. Franc Joseph had just announced that he was picking up the dinner tab do for Richten Deutschen. My father guffawed in this terrible german, reaching over and goosing ill on the rear she was big hearted enough to laugh it off. I think the Germans were amused by my chinese father, as though he were a small attack dog. But even as they were drinking, my mother told us later, she knew that something was kaput because while Deutschen were indeed headed to Malawa, they were planning to fly. My father, of course, had just gotten tickets for the bus, although back at the Addis Ababa airport there had been some question of safety about the bus, never quite explained. Please. One travel official in a shabby blue suit had pled with my parents. You are wealthy Americans. I beg of you. The people of the bus, they are not good. But my father stood firm. Why ride in a plane for an hour when you could sit on a bus for nine and save almost $30 for four people? Besides, he insisted, we are not stupid tourists. We will go the way the natives go. It will be so much more educational. But of course, our new german friends would not buy that my mother was stuck. So she fudged the truth just a little. But have you heard about the fabulous bus? She asked the group over that festive ethiopian dinner. She herself looked fabulous that night, her crisp dark hair set off by fire engine red dress and big amber beads. The scenery is absolutely stunning. You will miss it all. By plane, everyone takes the bus. It is what is done. Perhaps a bit rustic, but Serge Mittlich, in its own way, it is the one place where adventure and economy meet. Please, my friends, you must take the bus with us. Please. Life is too short. Too short because we are, all of us, travelers. Nicht wah? Foreign people in a foreign land. There was a hush, then an explosion of hugging and weeping and something being spilt. So the mood is bright, if somewhat hung over. The next morning, when we all reconnoiter at the bus station, yet another manure field. Gutenbergen. My mother calls out. Gutenbergen. The Germans cry back. They supervise as a small ethiopian hefts their fabulous leather luggage on top of the bus, tying it all down with skeins of twine. The many ethiopian peasants, the women in black muslin and the men in work shirts and wrinkled corduroys, pretty much ignore us, busy lifting their own chicken coops and lentil baskets. A small detail, as my mother liked to put it later when she'd retell the story, a small detail is that there's not one, but two buses heading out towards Malawa. This day, we and the Germans are all assigned to the first bus. Our family is further subdivided into three seats together at the front, ours and one way way at the back, among the chicken coops. My father's good, but here's the wrinkle. Our seats are right over the wheel. The floor rises in a hump under our feet. We can't stretch our legs out for 9 hours, and as I've told you, my mother is five foot eleven. But the bus officials seem oddly opposed to us changing our seats. Why? The first bus is full, and for some odd reason they do not want to put us on the second. But my mother insists, but we cannot sit there. We cannot. Mein Gott. It is intolerable. We are not animals. And then, in with the haymaker, I will go to the american consulate. Bingo. Without a word, three of us are moved to the second bus. Far from anyone we know, the buses navigate their way down treacherous mountains. The mountains are beautiful, if threatening in their jagged blueness. Occasionally a small peasant child in a soiled galabea runs by the side of the road, waving. His small shout fades off in the distance. The road zigzags, zigzags. At the end of each hairpin turn is a lone white cross. I drop off to sleep. Popping like the sound of a truck backfiring jolts me awake. All around us, ethiopian peasants are dropping to the floor. There are shouts. Then, all at once, like a congregation, the Ethiopians rise and file down the aisle, fingers laced on top of their heads. My mother does not say two words to us. She kneels swiftly. Her hands fly over our bags. She stuffs all of our familys passports and travelers checks under caitlins and my blouses, smoothing our waistbands to hold them in place. Are we there yet? I ask. My mother claps her hand over my mouth and pushes me towards the door. When I get there, I see what the twin forces of adventure and economy have brought us to. Not a pavilion of happy dancing people, but eritrean terrorists clad in military fatigues, firing machine guns randomly into the air. Ahead of us, an ethiopian peasant woman's cheap black purse is cut from her arm, obedient as ethiopian sheep, we filed down the stairs and form ourselves into what appears sickeningly to be firing squad formation. All around us is the blankness of the eritrean desert. Ahead of us the road stretches out towards Malawa, pearl of the Red Sea, pitted and empty. Oh God, I think. Oh God. Now I look up into the wide blue sky. The great blue depth is mesmerizing, oddly peaceful. So this is it, I think, the end of my life, right here. No more sour lemonade, no more hay smell. I will never grow up to be 20. We wait, but the bullets do not come. It gradually dawns on us that the terrorists real interest is in the first bus, not the second. 50 yards up the road, Ilse, Franz Josef, and the fat couple have become the center of attention. They stand helplessly in their sumptuous safari outfits, hands in the air. The leader shouts at them. My eye slides down the line of first bus passengers, and there, towards the end, is my father with a small body, dark coloring, and worn rag sweater. He actually kind of blends in, and I realize in that moment, with a kind of savvy world traveler's instinct, that my father will not be shot that day. And in some small way, I am glad. Franz Josef, Ilsa, and the fat couple, on the other hand, are being marched off towards low brown hills as hostages. Ethiopia. My mother cries out. It is five years later. She is back in our dining room in southern California, finishing the pearl of the Red Sea story for yet another group of mesmerized dinner guests. But how? Someone asked. Abenathulich. The bus company set it all up. It was totally corrupt. They put all the foreigners on the first bus to make it easy. Had it not been for the wheel, the wheel, I and the puzzolinhuns would have been marched off as hostages as well. Our deutsche friends were released two weeks later, but their passports, cameras, travelers checks, they never got back. At that point, they may have wished they'd flown, but then they would not have saved that $30. Who needed to see the pearl of the Red Sea anyway? Not us. That night we dined on hot dogs, on chocolate milk at the american military base in Malawa. We slept on metal beds. It was so elegant. Morgan, freeze. We were chauffeured straight back to Lullibella via military convoy, which was fine wis me, I said, as long as I don't have to sit over the wheel. Everyone applauds and laughs, and so do I, wanting the story to go on and on. But as the years go by, my mother gets more and more tired of telling it, because the ethiopian vacation comes to be the story of her marriage, a compromise between two opposites that can never be made to work. Eventually, my parents spent all their time alone, screaming and fighting, and then they stopped talking at all, lived together in silence, two strangers under one roof. What my mother will do sometimes after a dinner party is slip into the garage, still in her amber beads and fire engine red dress. She sits alone in my father's 56 buick, puts the radio on, smokes a cigarette because the true mirage turns out to be not the pearl of the Red Sea. But that Buick, when my mother had first seen it on that magical day in the fifties, was the car of a true American, a man who had put his sorry past behind. But that Buick would turn out to be an anomaly in my father's life, a youthful extravagance from which he would never quite recover. As the years went by, it would make my father sick for anyone, even to drive it, to waste money on gas. So while my mother left her world war two behind, he could not forget his shanghai. He has brought it with him. And this is where they live, not in America, but in his shanghai. So in his home, it is she who remains the perpetual traveler, a foreign person, always in a foreign land. Sandra Tsinglo is the author of the book depth takes a holiday. Coming up, David Sedaris travels without his family. In a minute. When our program continues, it's just american life. I'm Iroh Glass. Each week on our program, we choose a topic, bringing you stories from a variety of writers and performers. Today's show, vacations. We've arrived at act three, Los Angeles, and low story represents a kind of a limit case. You know, the ultimate scenario of a nightmare family vacation. Traveling without your family has its own little problems. David Sedaris has this story about awakening to all the possibilities of just hitting the road alone. David is the author of the book Barrel Fever, a sometimes commentator on NPR's Morning Edition, and a frequent contributor to this american life. It started innocently enough, the year I began the 9th grade and attended an all day planet of the Apes marathon at a budget theater a mile or so from my parents house. I had seen the original movie nine times, waiting always for Vera to ask, what will he find out there in their forbidden zone? Doctor Zias, followed by Charlton Heston's heartfelt damn you. Damn you all to hell when he discovers he's been on his home planet throughout the course of the entire movie. I had entered the theater on a bright, humid morning, but when I came out dazed and candy bloated, it was dark and raining. I thought of calling for a ride, but my mother was off enduring my older sister's flute recital. That left my father, and he was out of the question. I'll be there in ten minutes, he'd say. In the background. I would hear nothing, which meant he was holed up in his bedroom watching a golf tournament on tv. Golf involved hours of dead time, interrupted every so often by the announcer, who would whisper, Palmer is obviously thinking about last week's disastrous 7th hole at glistening's hands. I'd call back an hour later and my father would answer, saying, I'm on my way out the door right this minute. Jesus, give me a second, will you? On the television, one of the pros would pace the fairway, hitching up his lime green slacks. It's bogey or nothing. If Snead wants to come in at par 72, you could outgrow your clothing. Waiting for my father to pick you up. I left the theater and held out my thumb. It was just that easy. My father was in the habit of picking up hitchhikers. We would be packed into the station wagon on our way to the pool or the grocery store, and he would pull over, instructing us to make room for company. It was exciting to have a stranger in the car. My father, his cocktail tinkling between his thighs, was always gracious but at the same time suspicious, behaving as though he were in on some big secret and could pinpoint the lies these people told. Okay, Rudy, I'll be happy to take you to your grandmother's house so you can pick up your laundry. He would shake his head and chuckle to himself, but the hitchhikers didn't seem to mind. I noticed, though, that he only stopped for young people. We would spot some stooped and weathered man standing beside a beat up suitcase and call out for my father to stop. Dad, look. But he drove right on by as if they were painted cutouts advertising a restaurant named Tramps or hobos. I held out my thumb, figuring that someone like my father would pick me up, but instead it was an old woman, her helmet of hair protected by a plastic rain cap. She rolled down her window and shouted, damn you. Get your sorrowful butt into this car. She wore a pale blue uniform, the outfit issued to the cashiers at the local supermarket chain. I got a grandson out there about your age, and if I ever caught him hitching a ride, I'd stick my foot so far up his butt I'd lose my shoe. What do you think you're doing out there? Where are your people? I told her that my father was a PoW in Vietnam, and my mother, shes a long haul truck driver on a run to Kansas City, right? The woman said, stubbing out her cigarette, and I breastfeed baby camels in my backyard just for the freaking fun of it. She pulled up in front of my parents house. Truck driver, my pretty pink keister. Now you get in that house and you stay there before someone carves you up. You were lucky this time, but if I ever catch you out here again, ill run you down. Just to spare you the misery, I started hitchhiking on a regular basis. Aside from the convenience, I liked the fact that these people didn't know anything about me. I could reinvent myself every time I opened a car door, trying on whichever personality happened to suit my mood. Some people pulled up as if they were expecting me hours ago, while others slowed down to study me before coming to a complete stop. There were black ministers and retired locksmiths, lifeguards, college students, and floor sanders, and they were usually alone. Raleigh wasn't that big of a town, and most people didn't mind going a mile or two out of their way. I never hitchhiked beyond the city limits until I was sent off to college and met a girl named Ronnie. Her mother had died in the living room while confined to an iron lung, and her father had remarried twice within the last four years, dragging her through two sets of stepfamilies. Ronny was tough and independent in a way I'd never known. She'd had a secret sleep over boyfriend at the age of 15 and was well instructed in the arts of cigarette rolling, camping, breaking and entering, and hair care. Our campus was isolated in the mountains of western North Carolina, far from anything one might label a point of interest. But Ronny took charge, initiating hitchhiking trips to Asheville and Gatlinburg, to Nashville and Raleigh and Washington. At the end of the school year, I transferred to Kent State, and Ronnie packed off to San Francisco, where her brother arranged a job for her at a movie theater. I lasted a year in Ohio before deciding to join her. I'd never hitchhiked that far, much less alone, allowing fear to get the best of me. I made the mistake of teaming up with Dale Knowles, a freshman I'd met at a dorm party. Dale was creating his own major in beat literature. That was the first warning sign when shaking hands. He tended to position his palm as if he were returning a volleyball. His prominent gums accommodated teeth the size of chiclets, and he wore a safari hat decorated with buttons and pins, promoting everything from the concept of world peace to the legalization of polygamy. What I disliked more than anything else was his laugh, which was prolonged and phlegmy, like a cat tossing up a hairball. And he carried a guitar. We hadn't even gotten our first ride before he pulled it out and began composing one of his appalling ballads. Standing on the highway, thumb up in the air, people passing by pretending not to care. I'd sooner pick up someone waving a pistol than holding a guitar. He'd lie barefoot on the side of the road with his head propped up on his knapsack, exercising his toes and wondering why we weren't getting any rides. The guy just didn't get it. We were outside of Indianapolis, and we were picked up by two young men in a jeep who introduced themselves as Starsky and Hutch, names borrowed from the brazen, Cultish heroes of a popular television show. They were wired and loopy, washing down over the counter amphetamines with quartz of malt liquor that rolled back and forth the floorboards beneath the front seat. When asked where they were from, Starsky made a gagging gesture. That's code for Delaware, Hutch said. Starsky gave the finger to the driver of a boot shaped gremlin. State bird, Hutch said. Said. He took a swallow of his warm malt liquor and belched. State motto, Starsky said. Noticing the tank was low, they pulled into a service station where I offered them some gas money, hoping that, like most people, they might view my generosity as payment enough. Starsky said he had it covered, adding that he could sure use some fudge. Do you have a taste for it? Well, I do. Run on into the store there and see do they have some. It always made sense for one person to stay with the car in case your driver decided to take off with your pack. So Dale stayed behind, which worked out well for him, seeing as he would rather swallow flashlight batteries than shell out a few dollars for some idiot's fudge. He sat in the back seat while I went into the store and bought a block of something fudge like and a small bag of potato chips, which I might offer as a snack to our next driver. When I got back to the car, Starsky replaced the gas cap and pushed me into the back seat. The attendant headed our way, a roll of bills in his hand, ready to accept payment, and he reached the bumper just as Starsky peeled out of the station, driving over the concrete embankment and onto the interstate. I'm not sure how cool this is, Dale said. What about the police? Police, Starsky said. Police. Hey ho, buddy. We can outrun the damn police, no problem. He stood upon the gas pedal and the jeep advanced, much like a plane. Moments before taking to the air, Starsky had upon his face the expression of a comic book bombardier preparing to destroy a village of unsuspecting peasants. He yelled out for Hutch to hold the wheel while he opened a package of fudge and the jeep swerved into the other lane, barely missing an oncoming refrigerated truck. Horns blared and brakes squealed. And for the first time in my life, I thought, this is how people die. This is exactly how it happens. Dale's hat blew out the window, which meant that at least one of us would go with a smile on his face. Had the wind taken his guitar, I might have embraced death with open arms, shouting the word hallelujah and beating a tambourine. Starsky and Hutch seemed to enjoy our pathetic displays of fear, jiggling the steering wheel and cutting off other drivers just so they could watch us cower and pray. We covered an enormous amount of ground in an hour before Starsky pulled over to relieve himself behind a billboard and Dale and I jumped out, hugging our packs. This is great, I said. Really? This is exactly where we wanted to go. Terrific. Dale used the downtime as an opportunity to compose a few new songs. I'm well aware they were from Delaware. Days later, he was asking for a word that might rhyme with Utah. That'll keep you up all night. I know from experience. We reached San Francisco, where Ronny had gotten me a room at her residence hotel on Market Street. Dale stayed for a week, leaving by bus. The day after. I walked in on him standing naked before a full length mirror, singing, San Francisco, you stole my heart. Now that I've found you I'll never part California's stirring in my blood. His privates were covered by the guitar, but his pale, spotted rear end was more than I could bear. Ronnie and I stayed on for three months before taking off to pick pairs in Oregon. She was the perfect traveling companion as a boy and girl together have much better luck than two guys. We got rides with single women and truck drivers who claimed they needed company and then never said a word. We slept in abandoned houses and open fields, under bridges and behind barbed wire fences. After the pears were finished, we picked apples and then headed up to Canada, back to California and across the country. Arriving in western North Carolina in mid November, Ronnie thought she might stay awhile, and I decided to visit a former college roommate in Ohio, the longest trip I'd ever taken alone. I got an interminable ride with a pantyhose salesman who spent 6 hours saying, you just take and take, don't you? Don't you? Out there with your thumb in the air, not a care in the world, grabbing whatever you can get. Yes, sir. You take and you take until you're ready to burst. But what about giving? Did you ever think about that? Of course not. You're too busy taking me. I'm what you call a taxpayer tax. It's a tariff that working people have to pay so that someone like you can enjoy a life, leisure. I give and I give until I've got nothing left. Then I turn right around and I give some more. I give and give to all of Uncle Sam's little takers. And I've been thinking that maybe it's about time I get a little something in return. Yes, indeed. Maybe it's time we try that shoe on the other foot for a change. You, my young friend, are going to wash my car inside and out, and you're going to pay for it. He exited the interstate and headed for a car wash, the roof of which supported three cheerful seals buffing a limousine with their motorized fins. The man stood beside the bumper, supervising me as I shampooed and waxed his car. That's right. Put a little muscle into it. Next, I want you to empty those ashtrays and vacuum the interior top to bottom. Come on, Speedy. Let's get cracking. I had no problem with the work, but he was driving me out of my mind. How does it feel to be given for a change? Not much fun, is it? Hurry up now and buff those hubcaps. Let me see you buff. He had me polish everything from the antenna to the license plate before handing me my pack and driving away. I got a ride back to the interstate and another that landed me 20 miles beyond Charleston, West Virginia. It was around 04:00 and I hoped I might catch a long ride that would take me through to Ohio. It was cold and my hands were chapped from washing that lunatics car. My fingernails shone from the wax. I waited ten minutes before someone slowed down and stopped 20 yards up the road. It was a pickup truck, advertising and air conditioning and refrigeration company. The man's shirt introduced him as TW. His fingers were soiled with grease, and the cab of his truck was littered with candy wrappers and soda cans. I asked him what Tw stood for, and he told me it stood for TW and that his last name started with an a. So if you put it all together, it had a nice ring to it. He had an open, sincere face. The features set into a gesture of wonder, as if he had spent the last ten years in a coma. And everything was new and sensational to him. When I told him I was headed to Ohio to study medicine, he said, really be a doctor and operate on people? You must be some kind of smart to be a doctor. Operate on brains, you say? I told him I'd already done it a few times, and it wasn't as hard as it looks. I was hitchhiking because I'd made a bet with a friend that I could get from Duke to Kent State in 18 hours. I didn't need the money. It was just something medical students did to blow off steam. Well, I'll see that you win that bet, TW said. He explained that he had cut out of work early and would be happy to take me all the way to Ohio, seeing as he was a night owl and he hadn't spoken to a doctor since his foot had been crushed by an air conditioner a few years back. Look at me, he said, brushing the candy wrappers onto the floor. Riding with the brain doctor. We could get started as soon as he dropped some papers off to a friend. That's what he told me. He drove off the interstate and onto a series of highways and country roads before stopping at a tavern. It was a cinder block building lit with signs advertising brands of beer and the existence of a pool table. He asked, would I like to come in? But I was underage and had not yet developed a thirst for alcohol. It was dusk by this time, the sun fading behind the surrounding mountains. I waited an hour, 2 hours, three. It had gotten too dark to leave, as I had no idea where I was, and hardly any cars passed along the road. There were no streetlights, and I could hear threatening dogs barking off in the distance. When it began to rain, I took my pack from the bed of the truck and carried it up front, rooting around for an extra sweater and a pair of socks I could wear on my hands. I stared at the lights of the bar, wondering who might choose to live in such a town. It was pretty enough. You might pass through and admire the mountains, but wouldn't a person then move on to somewhere more important? Travel is supposed to broaden your mind, but it had a way of depressing me. The more places I went, the more people I saw, the more I realized I didn't matter to anyone except the family I'd left behind and who knew them outside from their friends and neighbors in a town just as pointless as this one. It brought me down to think about it, so I turned on my transistor radio and listened to a local call in show. TW staggered out of the bar at around 10:00 he had his arms around a skinny, long faced man, an obese woman who held her pocketbook over her head in protection against the rain. She said something and the men doubled over, laughing. I was in a pretty bad mood, but when you're hitchhiking it's best to keep it to yourself, as you don't really have a right to complain. Even before he got into the truck, I understood that TW was drunk. He waved goodbye to the man and woman and proceeded to start the engine, jabbing the key here and there as though the ignition might have moved during his absence and could be anywhere by now. Those are my friends, he said. I been knowing them all my life, and theyre fun people. You got that? His face had lost that innocent quality and become stern and dogmatic. Friends. He shouted. Personal, private friends. He repeated the word several times, pounding his chest with his fist as if he were training an ape to speak. My friends. Something told me we wouldnt be driving to Ohio anytime soon. We reached the interstate and I offered to get out, but he wouldn't hear of it. You're coming with me, he said. Home. To my house with me. I've got a place fixed up nice with rugs and toasters and a lot of things like that. My house. Mine. No way are you going out on a night like this. Forget all that other crap with school and college, it doesn't matter for stinking squat. I pictured his house as resembling the tavern and hoped it was located on a brightly lit street with a decent amount of traffic. Once there, I could probably make a run for it. Big brain doctor, are you? Like to stick your fat little fingers in other people's skulls and tinker around? Is that what you like to do? I'll give you plenty to tinker with, hot shot. I was looking out at the wet road and didn't see it coming. He grabbed me by the hair and yanked my head down under the seat, holding me there with one hand while he reached into his jacket pocket with the other. The truck skidded and swerved onto the gravel shoulder before he grabbed the wheel and righted it. The gun felt just the way I always knew it would. He held it against the side of my face, the barrel butting against my jaw. I now imagined his home stacked with bodies, as this seemed to be the exact place where something like this might happen. Maybe he'd used his job skills and built a refrigeration chamber to prevent decay. Or maybe he'd bury me beneath some tool shed and they'd have to identify me through dental records. When had I last been to the dentist? Why wasn't I there now, my mother smoking in the waiting room and copying recipes from the magazines my dentist would probably say I was asking for it. His dentist would show up on tv, blinking into the camera to testify. He was such a nice man. We had no idea. I felt the car slow down and take a turn. We were off the interstate now, probably on an exit ramp. He raised the gun to steady the wheel, and I opened the door and jumped, thinking all the while of the many television detectives who seemed to do this on a weekly basis. Jump and roll, I told myself. Jump and roll like manics, like Barnaby Jones. I hit the gravel shoulder and tumbled into a muddy ditch filled with trash and brambles. My pack had fallen out with me, so I snatched it up and ran. Behind me, I heard the truck pull off the road. The door slammed, someone coming through the thicket. I thought I should climb a tree. But that's what you do for bears. No, bears will climb after you. Small bears, won't they? But he's not a bear. But still I can't climb with socks on my hands. He'll only shoot me down. Or shoot me now in the back. Maybe in the head. In the arm. Blow my arm off at the shoulder. What I needed was a gun or a knife. The Indians made knives and spears. Even now you'd see them in the souvenir shops. But how did they do it? It took days, probably, maybe even weeks. I turned my head to look behind me and fell into a knot of thorny bushes. I thought to get up and run, but he was too close now. I could see him through the trees, his truck lights shining in the distance. Idiot. He called. Hey, you. Get back in this truck. He looked off to my right, and I understood that he couldn't see me. I'm not gonna hurt you. Get back here. I was only joking. Hey, you. Hey. It's not even loaded. Look. He pulled the trigger and the gun made a puny clicking noise. Come on out. Hey, kid, I swear I was only joking. I watched as he returned to his truck. Get your ass back here. Hey, dopey, I'm talking to you. He lit a cigarette and tapped on the horn, behaving as though I wanted to come back but had lost the way. He rolled down the window and drove off slowly, the door ajar and the tablights on, whistling as if for a lost dog. I waited until I could no longer see the tail lights, and then I ran down the exit ramp and into the middle of the interstate, waving my arms and begging someone to stop. The first two cars just missed hitting me, but the third pulled over. Three students headed to Cleveland for an upcoming concert. I told them what had happened, my voice high pitched and breathy, and the driver turned to me, saying, sounds like you're a faggot yourself. This was not the sympathetic reaction I was hoping for. They had picked me up, hoping I had some dope, and they were right. We smoked it, and they popped in an eight track of the Ozark mountain daredevils. That was my punishment. My reward was that they never said another word until dropping me off somewhere outside of Akron. I continued to hitchhike for the next few years, but after the incident with TW, something seemed to have changed. It felt as though I had been marked somehow. I had always counted upon people to trust me, but now I no longer quite trusted them. By this time, I was certainly old enough to own my own car, but still not weathered enough to appear dangerous. People began picking me up with the idea I had more to offer than my gratitude. Drugs were the easy part. I carried them as a courtesy and offered them whenever asked. It was the sexual advances that got to me. I had never been much to look at, but that never seemed to matter, as neither were they. When I thought of sex, I pictured someone standing before me crying, I love you so much that I don't even know who I am anymore. He was no particular age or race. All that mattered is that he was crazy about me. This thing with drivers wasn't what I had in mind at all. I got the idea they were married with children. You fool around much when you hitchhike? Dad asked the question. Always fast like that, and always phrasing it in such a way that they could follow it up with, I'm only kidding. Geez, what's your problem? I studied myself in the mirror, trying to figure out what had changed. But all I saw was the same old me wanting to be someone else. I had an unpleasant experience with a married couple outside of Atlanta, a middle aged man and woman driving a Cadillac nude. At 02:00 a.m. a few days later in Fayetteville, I was led down a dark dirt road by a man who promised to crush my skull like a peanut. The second time you find youre yourself cowering in the bushes, you know it's time to ask yourself some tough questions. I got on a bus and never hitchhiked again. To this day, I still haven't learned to drive a car. It seems much too dangerous. And besides that, I'm just not the type to fill out insurance forms. I moved to cities with decent public transportation systems. Chicago and then New York which is even better. You hold out your hand for a ride but fold the thumb in pinky against your palm. The drivers don't speak English, which comes as a relief. You have to pay, but then again, you always do. Every so often I'll find myself in a car driven by a friend and will pass someone by the side of the road. He's young and the force of traffic has disheveled his hair. He looks into your eyes, pretending to expect nothing, and his lips are moving, practicing the story he plans to tell. Pull over, I say. I think I know that person. David Sedaris is the author of Barrel Fever and the fourth coming book, naked. And I know what you're thinking every time you turn on the public radio. It's the Ozark Mountain daredevils. I never read it in a book, I never saw it on a show, but I heard it in the alley on weird. Yeah, whatever that means. Our program was produced today by Peter Clowney, Elise Spiegel, Nancy Updike, and myself. Contributing editors Paul Tuft, Jack Hitt and Margie Rocklin. Some songs today were provided by Steve Cushing and the blues before Sunrise Radio Network, but not this one. If you would like a copy of this radio program, it's only $10. You can call us at WBEZ in Chicago to get it. 312-832-3380 is the number 312-832-3380 her email address radioell.com. funding for this american life has been provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. And Kathryn T. MacArthur foundation, the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation foundation and the listeners of WBEZ Chicago. WBEZ management oversight by Tori Malatia I'm Ira glass. What will he find out there in their forbidden zone? Doctor Zaeus damn you. Damn you all to hell. Back next week with more stories of this american life. You want to see an angel? You got to find it where it fails. If you want to get to heaven,